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ADDRESS. | 


1 risE to address the trustees of Transylvania, and this au- 
dience, who favor me with their attention, under circumstances 
of considerable embarrassment. I come not hither, like some 
of my hearers, familiar with the themes of the lecturer, and 
dexterous, from practised skill, in the various theories of edu- 
cation. It is not mine to review veteran toils, undergone in. 
urging tardy minds, along the highway of knowledge, and to 
gain an ear,as Aineas did, by the pathetic reminiscence, 

| ¢_____quzeque ipse miserrima vidi, 
Et quorum pars magna ful.” 
But it is my honor to speak to a portion of my countrymen 
with whom frankness is self-commendatory, and an appeal 
to whose gener, sufferance always finds a free response: I 
am therefore encouraged to proceed. 

The station which the speaker occupies, and the occasion 
for which the present address is undertaken, may lead some 
to suppose, that no topic could be more fitting, than a view 
of what constitutes a finished education, and completes the 
accomplished scholar. | 

But if such minds as Plato’s and Cicero’s required volumes to 
portray a single frame of government, or the grace and fash- 
ion of a single art, it must be stout presumption to think of 
compressing one of the’ profoundest and most copious sub- 
jects,* into the space of an hour’s harangue: unless, indeed, 
one were gifted with that endowment of “the spirit of the age,” 


* “That education only,” says Milton, ‘ can be considered as complete and 
generous, which fitsa man to perform justly, skilfally, and magnanimously, all 
the oflices, both private and public, of peace and war.’—Tractate of Educa- 
tion, 


4 


which can squeeze the hugest sciences into the tiny numbers 
of a “Family Library.” Let me hope then, not too much to 
disappoint you, in assuming the novel office of a popular ora- 
tor,and offering a few general and vague observations. 

It is the misfortune ‘of such indefinite and comprehensive 
addresses as this must be, that their topics are quite too broad 
and numerous. No mean authority has sanctioned the canon, 
that one idea is enough for a sermon. What then shall be done 
with a discourse, which the unthinking would have a minia- 
ture pandect, laboring under the weight of a thousand? A 
thousand, said 1? Why the engineer would feel hampered, 
had he no more wherewith to detail the wonders of that almost 
necromancy, by which he makes you skim a watery surface 
with a swallow’s grace and speed. But what sort of engi- 
“neers, artists, manufacturers, mechanics, workies, (by which- 
ever of these titles of republican nobility you please to style 
us,) are called to labor in academic halls?) Those whose high 
and serious office it is to evolve,'nerve, stimulate, and guide 
the noblest of all operative elements on. this spot below— 
tHoucnt—the true electricity of the world of life, which, like 
that subtle agent honored with the name, may he a benefaction 
or a scourge, a joyous blessing or a paralyziff™ woe:—those 
who are to work with, and teach to work for itself, the great- 
est of created things—rHE ImMoRTAL miNr—a manufactory, to 
use the language of business, for ingredients of life or death— 
a spirit, to use the language of morals, which, if it reflect the 
image of its Maker, can win even his matchless approval, but 
which otherwise can darken and blight a paradise. ‘T'remen- 
dous instrument! Yes: and the more we think of it, the more 
strongly are we persuaded, that that which teaches its adroit 
and effective and sanatory management—rpucation—is the 
greatest of human sciences: is indeed the only human science 
which marches in the style of royalty, with noble servitors m 
its train. : 

Such does education appear to me, when contemplated in 
the grave character of a Mentor to the noblest of sublunary 
things, without which this would wander and waste, injuring 


and mjured—or in the sublime light of those grand primal 
laws of Nature, which hold the planets in their spheres, and 
wheel them in their courses, but without which, they would be 
“wandering stars, unto whom is reserved the blackness of 
darkness forever.” 

Still, while the subject spreads itself before me, as nearly 
the most magnificent which can arrest and impress a mortal 
vision,* |] frankly confess, that I have no elaborated theory of 
it to present you. And perhaps the age has so teemed with 
patent imventions for making and mending minds, that one 
may without great discredit profess some foretokening aliena- 
tion at the thought, that, like a child overloaded with apparel, 
education may by theory, be swathed to death. In fact, a 


sincere apprehension of the impracticability of many theories, 
the banefulness of more, and the transientness of most, deterg 


me from the thought of adding another, to the host of negative 
benefits or positive evils, nae to use the shrewd iatestion 
of an article in the British Critic, may help the boasted “march 
of mind” backwards mstead of ‘forwards. LT would not cum- 
ber the ground of our history by throwing on it another theory, 
which would vonly augment, what a military inspector calls, 
“the dead heap”: a few scattered thoughts on the matter, mode, 
and end of an education, are all which will presume to claim 
your indulgence. 

THE MATTER AND MODE OF EDUCATIO are compelled 
to hear the grave discussions of tyros upon this subject, long 
before they are fledged with the lowest academical honors. 
Heé who knows not have even his body is knit together, “com- 
pacted by that which every jomt supplieth,” presumes to leg- 
islate. upon the capabilities of his mind, to determme what ali- 
ment will best sustain its energies, what training make it grow 
to perfection. No subject is considered more purely an ex~ 
pression of arbitrary enactment, than the routine of an edu- 
cation usually styled “liberal.” And this species of opinion 


* “% Even scripture calls religion “education in righteousness,”’— Vide 2 Tim. 
iii. 16, in the Greck. 


6 


often survives those days, when choice and will are better than 
syllogism or oracle. We discover errors without number in 
the religion of our forefathers, in the old fashioned manner of 
correcting the heart; and we deem it a pity if we cannot find 
blunders, in the old fashioned manner of improving the mind. 
Time was, e. g. when the study of languages was esteemed 
admirably calculated to instil the art of shaping, coloring and 
imparting ideas—an art which, if dimidium facti, qui bene cepit, 
habet have aught of truth in it, includes the “better half” of 
eloquence, for the pulpit, the bar, and the senate. ‘Time was 
too, when the mathematics were judged indispensable for 
eliciting such faculties as attention, abstraction, and reason: 
faculties of such acknowledged importance in the most cele- 
brated courts in the world, ‘that a respectable authority, at a 

@late so fresh as 1834, informs us, # A great portion of the most 
distinguished English lawyers have signalized themselves, in 
the contest for mathematical honors, at Cambridge.”* 

In truth we, in this country, seem to be on the shore of ‘an 
ocean of changes—the fountains of the great deep are broken 
up—we are about to swing loose from the'moormgs of ages, 
and like those who, in the fifteenth century, were bison the 
soil where we stand, to try for a continent of discoveries. For 
myself, I am obliged to avow the unfashionable belief, that the 
period has not arrived for us to bid farewell to the old paths, 
where was the good way. It becomes me to beg pardon of 
the devotees of transition, if my ignorance is the cause of 
this sentiment; but it certainly does yet appear to me, as if 
modern theories of education had not stood the “ wear and 
tear” of time, as others, by whose culture many minds have 
grown, like the mustard-seed, from insignificance to stateliness, 
and_left such proofs of their dimensions as are yet unseen 
among later legacies of wisdom. It is my lot and privilege 
occasionally to open folios, beneath which, some of our impa- 
tient utilitarian spirits would be phiysically overburdened; and 
when I compare them with the Lilliputian swarm of our pre- 
sent press, ugly feelings of skepticism, respecting this age of 


* “Nicklin’s Report on the English Universities,’ p. 19. 


7 


reviews and newspapers, will spontaneously obtrude them- 
selves. Our longest series of volumes is the bound numbers 
of a periodical journal; our heaviest book, the bound files of a 
daily advertiser. Indeed, we cannotsay of even the contro- 
versialists of our day, what Junius in a covert classical allu- 
sion of inimitable expressiveness said of his, “they pile up re- 
luctant quarto upon solid folio, as if their labors, because they 
are gigantic, could contend with truth and heaven.” Bui if it 
be a sound rule of: philosophy, to let hypothesis remain hy po- 
thesis, until it 1s proved to be fact, is it acting an infidel part, 
towards the many fair and symmetrical systems which court 
our deference, to exact some more credible and permanent evi- 
dence of their power, than the beautiful, eloquent, and beguil- 
ing pages on which they are often commended to us? Andis 
there unpardonable temerity .in the question, Whether the pre- 
sent age can enumerate scholars and volumes, which may com- 
pete with those that old times, and old systems, and an old 
world have brought forth? 

Not to go back one or two hundred years merely, but even 
to lift the curtain of those centuries, which have so long been 
a synonym for a night without moon or stars, if this audience 
could have listened to such men as Abelard, as the Master of 
the Sentences, as that doctor, whose acuteness and compre- 
hension of intellect gained him a superhuman appellation, is it 
treason to avow the humble, but fixed conviction, that they 
would not have thought the listeners of the dark ages*, who 
heard them with intelligence and applause, quite such a be- 
nighted and groping generation as has been generally suppos- 
ed? In a word, it is not my fortune, as it i8 of many of my com- 
peers in the business of education, to have indoctrinated or in- 
oculated myself with the pleasing persuasion, that we are the 
people, and that wisdom will die with us. True, Dr. Johnson 
has been laughed to scorn, for imagining education had nearly 
or quite attained her Ultima Thule, although he did so surround- 


*®Bee Note A. 


8 


ed by a galaxy of intellect, where the “gr eater lights” of our 
day would shine, 
Velut inter ignes 
Luna minores. ; 

True, there was no such poetry a hundred years agone as By- 
ron’s, nor such novels as Scott’s and Bulwer’s; but there were 
some such outlawed old writers as Shakspeare and Addison, 
Milton and Jeremy 'Tayior, there is Saxon English* enough im 
the Bible to save our ancestry from the blush of utter confu- 
sion, and it was roundly asserted in the preface to the first dic- 
tionary of the literature of our tongue, that “from the authors 
which rose in the time of Elizabeth, a speech might be formed 
adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance.” True too, 
there were not then such proficients 1 in the potency of lan- 
‘guage, as those who made heroes and heroines talk in words, 
y’clepd “killing” in the murderous nomenclature of-their admir- 
ers; but there were those who had sensitiveness sufficient to 
catch the radiations of true feeling, and to reflect them. in 
terms of which the following comment, on the most pathetic 
of sacred elegies, may stand as a specimen. “Did we,” says 
Dr. South, “ever find sorrow. flowing forth in such a natural 
prevailing pathos, as in the lamentations of Jeremiah? One 
would thmk that every letter was wrote with a tear, every 
word was the noise of a breaking heart? that the author was a 
man compacted of sorrows, disciplined to grief from his infancy, 
one who never breathed but in sighs, nor spoke but in a groan.” 
And true also it is, that in the times of which I speak, there was 
not what Hume called, though for a different purpose, “phi- 
losophy for the ladies;” and with the fairer portion of our cre- 
ation, that ought doubtless to be the better age, which has most 
exerted itself to please them. But ifless eminent for its literary 
gallantry, the age of our ancestors had a philosophy for men, 
which has gathered up so many of the secrets of the universe 
that but leavings often remain.} 


* See Note B. + Sermons, iv. 31. 
{See Note C. 


9 


.This is a strain which might be indulged in without end. 
Suffice it to say, that the speaker is not satisfied it is time to 
confine a knowledge of languages to professed interpreters, 
and mathematics to the keepers of observatories or a board of 
longitude. Most of the scholars of the old world were made 
under their discipline—when we, under our new and patented 
systems, can think, or speak, or write, better than they, it will 
be time to treat their means of education, as, we have full-bot- 
tomed wigs and grogram gowns. 

To notice one or two principles of een ee ie which it 
will be perceived, in what mode that matter should be employ- 
ed, which is designed for the basis of education, let me observe 
in the first place, that education should be constant. 

it seems to be a common impression that education is a thing 
of times and places—that the mind is to be superintended only 
when the dial announces a certain. hour, or the walls of the 

“school or college provoke us, by their very literary atmosphere, 
to inhale the breath of wisdom. But no mistake could be more 
complete, none in the long run moredeplorable. The mind is 
undergoing education every wakeful moment, from, the cra- 
dleto the grave. ‘This education is furnishing or disfurnishing 
the mental habitation, and making the tenant, from day to day, 
richer or poorer, better or worse. _We- are never without 
teachers of some sort. The mind will bé its own teacher if 
you give it no ether. It, will instruct itself for good or ill by. 
all the senses; the avenues for outward knowledge. It wil 
have food to prey upon, and if it can find nothing purer will 
raven garbage. It will sometimes prey upon itself, till be- 
wildered in lunacy or stung to madness. 

This fundamental and most serious# truth in the nature of 
mind, seems to be lamentably forgotten, it need not be said, 
‘in most theories of education, but in most practical systems of 
it. It seems to be almost a recognized fact, that watching 
and guiding the mind, and nurturing it with proper ideas, is to 
be attended to but at intervals: for the rest of a day, a week, 
or a year, It may run wanton and wild. 


Q 


10 


This is pitiable mismanagement. The mind in its immatt 
rity must never, never, be let alone. Particularly in earlies: 
life, when like an infant which puts every thing into its mouth, 
the mind, unable to select appropriate mental viands, swallows 
down all it can grasp, must it ever have at hand a kind and 
watchful provider, who shall rescue it from self-injury. And in 
later life, when of necessity it will be more resigned to its 
own governance,’ must it be taught the sober lesson, that we 
may as well stop breathing, as learning or unlearning; and 
that, as is often the case with the atmosphere we draw into 
the lungs, we may be unconsciously quafling poison. Perpet- 
ual vigilance, therefore, is the part of the teacher—caution 
that of the pupil. But how slightly is such a plain and impe- 
rative precept regarded. The parent thinks’ the teacher does 
every: thing for his child’s understanding, as the deluded reli- 
gionist thinks his priest does for his soul. Yet the teacher is 
conversant with his pupil, i.e. with any one individually, 
but a few minutes of the day: the parent, a solid number of 
hours. And if the mind be incessantly doing something, be 
unlearning something wholesome, or acquiring something posi- 
tively pernicious, and be all the while unregarded, is it wonder- 
ful that education, in hundreds brought to our schools and col- 
leges, proves a poor partial sickly thing—that the small influ- 
ence it gains in one hour, is lost and vanishes in the six when 

sthe mind is left to. itself, to rove whither it will, picking up all 
that comes in its course, fostering’ habits that years cannot 
eradicate, and preferences which determine the character of a 
life ?* a: 

In connexion with these remarks,a subject may be introduced, 
which has a natural afliance with them, and which were in 
itself a copious and weighty theme for the longest homily— 
viz: incidental education. This is a subject which, from some 
cause unknown, has never received the attention it merits. 
It assumes as a fact, what few are ignorant of, that there are 
in all minds peculiar seasons of aptitude and susceptibility. 


* See Note D. 


11 


There are mollia tempora fandi, when the most distancing and 
repulsive temperaments can be approached with hope. ‘There 
are moments of disarming pliancy, when the most thorny and 
flinty can be touched and intenerated. It is not always that 
the glass can be provoked to the concitation of electricity, but 
let the auspicious hour come, and it can vod with rings of 
fire. 2 

Our Saviour knew well the property of our constitutions 
now specified, and it is remarkable how his addresses, through- - 
out the gospels, are adapted to periods, places, and tempers, 
like strings: to the harp. Not an experienced lawyer is there, 
who has not deferred to it, in timeing his hints to a jury. Not 
an adept is there, in what that astute metaphysican, Nor- 
ris, calls “the magnetism of ‘the passions,” who has not 
found it richly for his interest, to watch and consult its oppor- 
tunities. Every thoughtful parent should give heed to it, with 

. that mental presence, by which distinguished chieftains have 
seized and improved the turning circumstances of victory. 
And happy will the parent be, who .can find, or ingeniously 
create such occasions, as that by which Cecil impressed on his 
daughter, the metaphysically simple, but practically most diffi- 
cult idea of faith.* 

Another principle which may safely be ‘laid down, and 
against which. we often‘offend, is, that education should not 
be disproportionate. By this is meant, that in education, we 
should regard what every one possesses, differing from the en- 
dowments of those around him. - Physicians term this idiosyn- 
crasy, using the word, as their profession requires them to do, 
principally or altogether of the physical constitutions or tem- 
peraments of men. But we aré no more alike, morally and 
intellectually, than’we are physically. How often is one re- 
marked for a naturally placid, and another for a naturally 
irascible disposition: how often one for a propension to ac- 
quire languages, and another.to unravel. the combinations of 
numbers, - ? 


* See Note E. 


12 


Now, like the notorious robber of Attica, who had a bed up 
to which he stretched the short, and down to which he ampu- 
tated the tall, shall we have one intellectual mould into which 
all minds shall be run, as though they were base lead? The 
conclusion looks paradoxical—it borders on the enormous, but 
it is often submitted to, as quietly as an established mode of 
carving the viands of the table. And yet it is ‘literally all that 
it appears to be. ‘Why even that marvellous, and, to many, 
most indiscriminate and harsh ‘disciplinarian, Dr. Parr, who 
knew how to work. up the raw material of mind, as well'as a 
gipsy how to tell a fortune, not only pardoned but commiserat- 
ed the naturally incompetent. Still, with real talent for a sub- 
ject, and a supple birch for a sceptre, he outvied the wonders 
of the magician and his wand. But we are too often the same 
to all—in the tasks we impose, the discipline we administer, 
the awards we bestow. - It is true, that in one or more of our 
colleges, a distinction, hardly known during my own academi-’ 
cal history, begins to be acknowledged—the fundamental one 
of science and literature. Now it must be plain to cursory 
observation, that there are minds which have most unlike apt- 
nesses, for one or the other of these wide distinctions of knowl- 


edge, and indeed for their subordinate departments. And no-| 


thing is or ought to be plainer, than that a native indication of 
such aptness should be regarded as the pointing of nature, to- 
wards the destination of the mind possessing it. . But because 
it is new to ws, to notice the original tendencies of separate 
minds, and to make provisions for them, we assume the port 
and bearing of discoverers, and: talk oracularly, as if the dis- 
tinctions of physical, intellectual, and moral education, were 
till now quite unheard of. 

Yet unless I am in grievous error, ‘the system of dietetics, 
exercise, and study, pursued, in the days of Henry VIII. and 
Queen Elizabeth, in the English Universities, would be a better 
defence against our fashionable*dyspepsia, than sesquipedalian 
rules of gymnastics never reduced to practice, or quickly 
exploded. 

As to intellectual discipline, ours no doubt is more ingenious 
than that which obtained in such a by-gone age, for it is adorned 


% 


13 


with the trappings of a hundred parti-colored, theories, while 
that consisted mostly in a few homely requisitions of downright 
hard labor; but much is it to be suspected, that the solid schol- 
arship which it produced, would outlive the prettier, but more 
superficial'and puffy learning of the present generation. And 
here, I may not forget, that it was to one of the very bondmen 
of this imaginary mental vassalage, a poor country parson, 
‘passing rich ‘with forty pounds a year,” Lord Bacon carried 
his immortal works, before he durst issue them from the press.* 
In this day, it must be a country, ay,.ora city parson of no 
mean erudition, (I will not ‘say physician or lawyer, lest Ibe 
thought invidious,) who reads the N ovum Organum in the orig- 
inal. . 
_ As to moral discipline, alas! how mala more anxiously did 
our ancestors estimate it thah we. We do indeed seem more 
alive than they, to the magnificent project of enlightening the 
whole mass of society. But it may be feared; that while we 
have been more sénsitive than they to the fact, that all have 
heads, we are perhaps less so to the fact, that all have hearts. 
And we have been toiling with our Lyceums, and Institutes and 
_ Jectures in multitude like the drops of dew, to diffuse “useful 
knowledge,” as if knowledge of itself, could meliorate and sanc- 


tify, or almost regenerate our race, And it is concéived that _ 


we have been fondling a scheme, fr aught with risks unspeakable. 
“T never yet knew a scholar,” says the’ famous old Roger 
Ascham, “that gave himself to like and love and follow chieily 
those three authors,” (he had just alluded to-Plato, Aristotle, 
and Tully,) “but he proved both. learned, wise, and also an 
honest man; if,” he adds with reverent caution, “if he joined 
withal the true doctrine of God’s Holy Bible, without the which, 
the other three be but fine edge tools in a fool’s or a madman’s 
hand.”’+~ And the pregnant warning, contained in this ancient 
scholar’s experience, has been ‘sounded late enough to echo in 
our own ears. Some twenty years since, the present chief 
dignitary of the Church of England ventured, with his charac- 


* See Encyc. Britt. Art. George Herbert, * 
+ Schoolmaster, p. 142. 


14 


teristic modesty and mildness, to hint that perhaps we were 
educating the heads of men too much, and would find 
our mistake quite costly, unless we educated their hearts 
in due proportion; and one angry journal, if not more, would 
have rained upon him, if possible, “hail-stones and coals of 
fire.’ He was denounced, as a frigid and gloomy priest, who 
would willingly drop anew on the world, the pall of the so de- 
nominated “dark ages.” But at length with the tortoise speed 
of human justice, when experience is the awarder, we are be- 
ginning to give his admonitions a grain of credit. The good 
prelate had no doubt read in his Bible, that even devils believe 
and tremble, and for all that are devils still: that even Satan 
himself can wear the, beauteous, apparel of an angel of light, 
and still be the father of lies.* “And he dreaded, as an honest 
forecasting Christian should, lest by endowing men with that in 
which the “spirits in prison” can be their rivals, bare knowl- 
edge without moral sentiment and principle to, imbue, restrain, 
and guide it, they might usé such knowledge, as do the tn- 
earthly enemies of man, for voraciously selfish and direfully 
injurious purposes; as the Ishmaelite, who wields his. weapons 
to assail and plunder every traveller; as the fool who scatters 
firebrands, arrowsyand death, and Heeb Am I not in sport?t 
Perhaps it is because we have been so inattentive to the 
moral education of our race, that ‘we have deemed of such in- 
considerable ‘value one of the best means of promoting: it: I 
mean the study of the moral history of man. “ History,” says 
Bolingbroke, who probably filched the sentiment-from an an- 
cient Greek{ without confession of the debt, “ History is philo- 
sophy teaching by example.” Or, as that sage statesman and 
wide-seeing observer, Burke, has more fully expressed it, “In 
history a great volume i is unrolled for our instruction, drawing 


*. * «Mark you this Bassanio, , 
_ The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. Merchant of Venice. 


+A good article on “Moral Education” (under the same head). enay. be 
found in Rees’s Cyclopedia. 


é t Digotus Siculus calls history, e the metropolis of all philosophy.” 


15 


the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infir- 
mities of mankind.” 

But how frugally is such philosophy had such Sibton! em- 
ployed to teach our children-what men are, and what they 
inevitably will be, unless their guidance is better, and their aim 
higher and purer than those of myriads. True: history itself 
is somewhat blameable, for it is often but one lurid and ghast- 
ly picture of “wars and fightings,” of. gore and slaughter. 
But there is such a thing as the history of the human mind— 
of human motives and passions, proclivities and temptations, 
determinations and schemes—of human sociéty, human poli- 
cies and human government. © Philosophy can cull examples 
of each from the appropriate page, and leave “the battle of 
the warrior, with confused hoise and gar ments rolled in blood,” 
to those whom the spectacle ravishes; and she can point her 
pupils to the insidious cause and the palpable i issues of charac- 
ters and conduct, from which ‘the novice in life’s career should 
shrink, as from a road terminating in-a quicksand or the brink 
of a precipice.* : 

Something surely, in regard a the capacity of human na- 
ture; as we now encounter it, for governing and bemg govern- 
ed, is indispensable for a branch of instruction, in a commu- 
‘nity where the péople are the source and the dispensers of 
power. Itis indeed the greatest of problems for, this world, 
_ What government is, not in theor y but in practice, best for 
mankind? I sayin theory, for it is evident that in theory no- 
thing can be more beautiful and self-commending than the pur- 
est democracy, where the people govern themselves without. 
the intervention of representatives. But our forefathers ac- 
counted a representative government better in practice, and we 
live under the constitution they bequeathed their ‘posterity. 
Questionless, if their legacy be worth preserving, it is worth 
studying and understanding. But who studies it? Where is 
a knowledge of it taught?t 

Certainly, if Blackstone was oe about the importance ef 

vi 3 


* See Note F. | my + See Note G, > 


. 16 

iy 
a knowledge of the laws of England, to every man who had a 
risk within the kingdom, a knowledge of the great compact, 
which still knits our huge mass together, is of prodigious mo- 
ment, when a breach of that compact would make us realize 
the oriental by parle: “all the foundations of the world are 
out of course.” If our gover ‘ment be not one of will but of 
laws, and if these laws be but frail paper, save as the good 
sense of the community embraces and allows them, and its 
good feeling will sustain their,execution, then we must under- 
stand our frame of government and the reasons on which it is 
founded, well and convincingly, or we are undone. “Sylla-' 
bles,” said the great ‘Selden, who lived as’ we do, * amid dis- 
tress of nations.and perplexity,’ “Syllables govern the world.” 
If the construction of‘our charters *for, and our acts of legis- 
lation, is not, to be surrender ed to the caprice’of a few or one— 
to,a Council of Ten, or a Czar of all the States—but to be 
swayed by the grand tide of an intelligent public sentiment, 
then those charters and acts must be more generally and thor-, 
oughly comprehended, than they ‘are now. But how few 
are there, even ainong our graduates, who could give us the 
bare details of the Constitution of our Federal Government— 
how many fewer, who.could assign the reasons for the checks 
and balances, which harmonize and adjust its parts—how ma- 
ny fewer still, they who could descant with scientific confi- 
dence on the rules which are to determine its special PSRs 
. and the:presiding spirit which is to give coherence and one-* 
ness to the whole. , 

This however,,and two. or three other subjects, which, in 
the almost measureless range allowed, and as far as possible, 
it may be, demanded, in addresses like the present, had been 

marked in union with it, must be dismissed, that I may heaton 
to the next star ting point in my observations. 

In. the first instance, the caption, matter and mode of edu- 
cation, was used, as it is hardly possible to disjoin, them, and 
they were named in the order suiting the arrangement of my 
remarks. ‘The mnext yon ee will be the : reverse of +htS THE 


4 


17 


MODE AND MATTER. OF EDUGATION, for the same reason which 
dictated the former. . 

What is education (1. e. the education’ of ‘the intellect) in 
the better sense of the term? Is it the mere crowding a cer- 
tain quantity of intellectual furniture into the mind? So some, 
too many indeed, seem. to define it, and in consequences. the 
more such furniture is piled up in the brains‘of their children, 
the: higher rises in their estimation the, talent of the teacher, 
and’ the character: of ' the pupil. But is not this a very grave 
and ominous misconception? No matter how full soever any 
building may be, of apparatus for domestié necessities or con- 
venience, if if be inethorough and inextricable confusion, of 
how much utility will it be, compared with, another, where 
there is no repletion, but where every thing is accessible and 
in order? * Which would be the most effective vessel, amid the’ 
shock of x naval confliet, a very Santissima’ Trinidada, whose 
entire armament was in disarray and complete mixed medley, 
and none of whose men or officers could come at the needful 
call, or some petty fri igate, at ‘the, tap of whose drum, every 
implement of war and every living fighter tpg her decks were 
ready for instant action? 

And-may not many. a mind, and a saa filled one too, be 
compared to. the lumber. garret, where all things are tossed 
into promiscuous heaps, ox to the ship, where Order has found 
no admittance, and, distraction reigns supreme? If so, then 
the mere being taught one subject or. another, or a thousand, 
is but a part of edtication; and, af “education is to be apt, ‘ly 
terous and effective, but.an inferior part of it. Yes, such is 
indeed ‘the fact. ‘It is not the accdutrements which make the 
_ gdldier—not the chest’ of tools which makes the mechanic— 
nof an observatory or a laboratory; though never so well fur- 
nished, which makes the astronomer or chemist. And it is not 
his books, though he wind: through the contents of them all, 
» which make the scholar. No: but-it is the long and arduous 
drill, which converts militia into: regular troops—it is a hard 
apprenticeship—the discovering: how to make bricks with 
straw or without it, which transforms the raw lad into the 

3 


18 


skilful journeyman—it is tedious and systematic, late and early 
study, which accomplishes the man of reflectorsand refractors, 
for disclosing the secrets of yonder sky, and the man of com- 
_ pounds and integrants, the wonders of the world beneath our 
feet! So it is not the cuthbering his'mind ‘with the contents 
of. a‘ few or many volumes, which pr omotes the. boy with his 
horn-book, mto the déetorated recipient of a diploma. By no 
means. He is: the- educated man who has been taught to 
think—to. know what sort of an instrument. the rind, which 

embraces the tools he works with, is—how he can most hon- 
estly and most sticcessfully use these’ tools for himself, and 
towards.alk around him. ‘And, but that I*deem it hardly safe, 
to experiment so lavishly’ and: wildly as some would, with the 
treasured admonitions of the past in strong or frowning relief 


before them, I would say, it is of no ‘consequence what matter, 


not positively vicious, you employ to. niake the mirtd think, sO 
you do but teach it the art of thinking with tension, point, and 
vigor, of alertly calling, commanding, and.tasking any or: all 
of its powers for any, given ‘purpose, ‘And when you: have 


done this, you have donk all which is requisite on the part of 


an instructer, towards equipping any pupil for the. journey, 
the voyage, the collision, or-the warfare (whichever you please 
to call it) of life.” “Walking is the art of. usingsthose members 
by which we ‘can exercise the: privilege of scbieieeent It is 
a most serious and difficult art to léarn but when once’attain- 
ed, and well attained, you havé no more solicitude about per- 
mitting ‘a child to go alone.  Edueation is an art which is to 
teach us the use of our mental faculties; and if‘it teach us’ their 
use with any thing. like the completeness, - with: which the 
nurse imparts a- - Inowledge ‘of limbs and joints, and, for 
practical purposes, the centre ‘of gravity, ueny ‘and not till 
then} can it deserve its exalted name. 7 

' With reference to such positions, it-need hardly be Lsideali 
how few minds, in view of the practice of the present day, are 
fit to go alone; nor thatif any thing isito be achieved, in rais- 
ing the mental character and eapability of the i age,-an immense 


amount of labor is to be steadily and perseveringly marched 


» 


—_ 


19 


through. And it is here, probably, that we have been most de- 
fective, and shall be most wanting, in the slow rounds of 
arduous years to cone. For it is not want of theory 
which need be complained of in this land of “many inven- 
tions.” ‘Theories we have, well propounded.and well defend- 
ed too, | 

; Thick as autumnal leaves in Vallomb rosa, 

But it is vain that we talk forever about it, and about it, till 
words grow weary under the task to which we put them. A 
theory never educated a single human being. No man was 
ever dreamed, or lapped,,or dandled into, learning. There is 
no more a royalor an aristocratic road now to wisdom’s tem- 
ple, than ih the days of the peevish and lazy king of Egypt. 
The wealth of Croesus, . the mines of*Potosi or Golconda, will 
not buy one idea for a cowering , lagging, halting, retreating 
mind. No: and perhaps we we ‘said enough, and more than 
enough, upon the best mode of advancing the human mind in 
wisdom’s ways. Let the word.now begin to go round, that 
‘the time has at length arrived for putting our hands faithfully 
to the great work, on which such multitudes, and gifted mul- 
titudes, have speculated and schemed, and are speculating and 
scheming still. Action, said the great master of eloquence, 
action makes the orator. It must bé this which will quarry out 
scholarship, if we ever have it. The teacher must act, and 
must learn the pupil theart of teaching his owm inind to act; 
or like the schoolmen,,who were paste wasting the 
most noble and agile faculties on what was possible, and leav- 
ing, unregarded lel was fact, we shall be no. further onward, 
in true mental PASEIeS® one hundr ed years hence than we are 
now. -. ; ra 

And more, if education be accomplished not so much by what 
_ thei mind pas Seg OVET, as: by how it passes overits var ious objects 
of conten up plation, then it is d fair and lawful inference, that it 
is not the array of learned works’ on a‘catalogue. of college 
studies, which will make deserving graduates, but.the thorough- 
ness with which instruction shall be given. now 


e 


20 


But this is an armor which “the spirit of the age,” like the 
youthful David, must assay to go in, for it has “not proved 
it? And verily “the spirit of the age” has its reward, for. the 
lighter panoply in which it has hover to confront ignorance. 
See it, for example, in all which our students carry away of 
knowledge, to say nothing of love, of languages consecrated 
to classic use, and by the classic unanimity and devotion of: 
many acentury. Why, I myself have seen acollege class in 
the very delirium of joy, at emancipation from a volume 
through which they had long plodded a weary way, convert 
their text-books inta footballs. A most grievous commentary 
this, some would haye said ,upon the profit of constraining young 
minds to grind through languages, which they will begin to 
forget forever, so soon a& they bid adieu to their alma mater. 
Pertinent example for such a process, some may say, Js the toil 
of that Jewish Hercules whose powers once blessed his coun 
try, when he was forced to misapply them in the mill of the 
Philistmes. But it might better be said, grievous commentary 
this, upon the mode in which languages are studied, and upon 
the objects generally designated for the study of them. It is 
any thing but the stinted knowledge of the fleshless meanings 
of words, which is to be acquired by classic studies. If this 
were all, one might as well flounder through a Greek or Latin 
dictionary, as any other book whatever. And it is not for the . 
meagre or sorry purpose of cultivating, what a phrenologist 
well call the organ of langinage, that ts studies in question 
should be attempted. ' No! it is for the purpose, and I know , 
few more important, of enabling us: to learn the rare art of 
promptly summoning adequate, cogent, felicitous, racy and 
thrilling words for the expression of ideas. And if languages 
are taught,as they always’ should’ be, (and I conce e their lit- 
tle utility in the mode they are generally taught,) in such a 
way as to make one.a master of comely and bland, ‘of lucid 
and beamy, of nervous and enlivening, of (to use the poet 
_ Gray’s couplet) breathing and burning terms, for the commu- 
nication of his opinions, it must, I think, be admitted that an_ 
advantage is won by them of transcendent value. ' For it is 


2 


said, in a well known and memorable adage, that “ knowledge 
is power;” but the phrase is elliptical, or it must often be 
forceless. Is knowledge, mere knowledge, power? Contrast 
the influence of the tongue-tied walking encyclopedia, with 
that of some, who with the lips. of a Nestor, a Chrysostom, 
or a Mansfield, have but the tythe of his massy erudition. It 
is not then knowledge, but, very frequently, the art of commu- 
nicating knowledge, which constitutes genuine power, Scire 
tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat glter. And it'is the lesson 
of my own experience, that a study of languages, if well con- 
ducted, is the best ordinary way of acquiring such knowledge. 
Far-be it from me.to dogmatise on this litigated topic: my ap- 
peal is to the testimony of a restricted experience only. But 
in view of that, the examples of a Shakespeare, Hneldings or 
- Franklin, do not make me falter.* 

- A word,’perhaps, were riot misplaced here, upon a subject 
which has: often furnished scope to rolling declamation: I al- 
lude to what custom has dignified with the title, cmnrus. 
This is too often, and: most wrongfully, esteemed a succeda- ’ 
‘neum for all modes of education. LEspecially do many imagine 
with balmy confidence, that genius only can make one a writer 
or speaker—a “master of assemblies,” by his plastic pen or 
magic tongue. This is hallucination in the superlative degree. 
And it is declared such, with am undisguised admission of the 
natural inequality of the human species: men never were 
upon a perfect level, even as to their inborn qualities, and they 
never will be, until the sameness imagined to exist among them 
shall exist in nature; until the mountains shall sink, the vallies 
rise, and the whole globe become one dead unbroken plain.t., 
Yet, with such an admission as a check and warning, freely 
is it alleged that toil is a surer, help “than* genius, and that 
where Nature has made one great man, labor has made scores 
and thousands. Be it, that it-is still written in the cr eed of the 
sons of the Muses, poeta nascitur non fits The confessions of 
men, whom-the panegyric of their coevals has lauded for unmix- 


* See Note H. "t See Note Tt 


aa 


ed genius, have supplied evidence strong as demonstration, that 
they have garnered in their mental opulence, as the farmer has 
his bhciy’dots) by the plain, unromantic method of. toil, which has 
wrung sweat, from their brows. What made ‘Sir Isaac New- 
ton a peerless mathematician? Himself has given the answer, 
that it was the acquired power of fixing his mind undistracted, 

upon continuous processes of thought, from which salient as- 
sociations would divorce ‘common minds, almost with every 
beat of the heart. And by what alchymy obtained ‘he this 
power, which produced such colossal wonders? Simply by. 
carrying his édueation, (in that definition of it which has been 
given you, the art of thinking,) to a degree.of. per fection, far, 
far short of which, the wearied and disheartened multitude give 
all exertion over, and leave their minds, like a ship without » 
compass, cliart, or rudder, to he the ‘sport of countless acch 
dents. Millions. of our race, like the crew of -the oreat dis- 
coverer of: our western world, become tized from the very 
greatness of. the'way., It is-only here and there a few, an un- 
faltering few, rari nantes in curgite, vasto, who, like this -dis- 
coverer’s self, press’ toward the mark, and at length, reach 
safely and happily the haven, where they would be. Most true 
is this of those, who, as some think, make language by invisible 
sorcery, ductile and malledble as gold. InfiSition never pur- 
chased for Addison the rare eulogy of the great English lexi- 
cographer. It never graced Fenelon with his artlessness, or 
-enrobed Bossuet with his majestys,. It never created a:Chat- 
ham,.a Burke, or a: Sheridan; for the arduous closet toil of 
these, intellectually, children of Anak, has become a matter of 
notoriety. It has not made: one, whom the present age is 
pleased, whether rightfully or capriciously,' to signalize with 
the acclaim of fts praises—the author of Pelham. “It is,” 
says he, “to a critical study of the rules of: fiction, that I 
owe every success in literature that I have. obtained; and in 
the mere art of composition, if I now have attained to eVen 
too rapid a facility 3 in expressing my thoughts, it has been pur- 
chased by a mest laboriqus slowness in the first commence- 
ment, and resolute refusal to write a second sentence, until I 


am 
p33 


had expressed my meaning in the pad manner | could in the 
first.”* Never then shall the idea be cherished here for a sin- 
gle moment, that uncultivated intellect is a stable reliance-for 
any body, who pretends to less than divine inspiration. 
Nil sine magno 
Vita labore dedit mortalibus; ; 

or, with a higher sanction, “Seek and ye ‘shall find,” ‘shall be 
the doctrine we’ inculcate. Those, who, in ‘the. language of 
Montaigne, think they can ride astridé of the epicycle of Mer- 
cury, may trust their powers for all ‘to which they will ever 
. be competent, and arrogate » all the triumphs ‘they will ever 
deserve. We will never offend against the decalogue, in 
ge their capacities or their’ reward. CO a 

-So much‘ of time has beén » exhausted, in. these desultory 
observations on the matter and mode of education, that the 
space allotted to some, thers, upon its END, must he travelled | 
with greater haste, _ What, s! should we be educated for, i is the | 
question to which I would devote ‘the few mimates’ remaining. 

Men too often look upon their minds, 4s upon broad, acres” 
or stock in bank—as something exclusively their s, and to be 
émployed solely for their individual benefit. But the language 
of reason and inspiration is; What hast thou that hou didst 
not receive? We will not Believe that chance produced a 
cabbage. in our gardens; from whence then shall we believe 
come the high capacious powers that lie “folded up in man’? 

We know that mortals can build pyrginids and a Coliseum, 
invent a steam-engire or *a chronofneter; but that ‘all the 
aggregate ingenuity ‘from Adaria ‘till now could neither weave, 
nor forge, nor concoct one solitary spire of grass. We are 
not then the formers or sculptors of souls # we owe another for 
them.’ Dina tebe 
This réasoning is’ Bat and simple; but the oe is 
long and comprehensives , It must not.be forgotten. as it has 
been, and is; and these minds, which. constitute our noblest 
distinction and highest’ privilege, must’ not be esteemed and 
used with a sordid ambition for a grandizement or gain. It 


» * Bib, Rencnkery and Quart. Obs, No. xx. p. 488. 


24 


were poor philosophy, which would not declare it a solemn 
truth, that responsibility keeps pace with all valuable endow- 
ments whatsoever. It: were shameful insensibility, which — 
_ would allow any one, like a miser to hoard up, or a spend- 
thrift to waste powers, which can disseminate happiness. Be 
it then an axiom, that the man of intellect is the keeper of a 
treasure for which he is one day to account, (to say nothing 
of heaven,) with that inward arraigner, who upbraids him at 
times with such severity, that he flies to the fancied oblivion 
of suicide. to distance his damning voice. It were a mournful 
thing to answer for,the spoiled health or happiness, of those 
who have felt our influence. What then will it be, to have the 
‘wronged and blasted destinies of a fellow creature demanding 
reparation, in an hour when judgment, is eyeing us with a 
suspended sword? Let none here parry the.appeal which this 
consideration aims at him: let none be deaf to its formidable 
forewarning. » Every intelligent and educated mind, in its 
_ place, and.sphere, and ‘dué proportion, is the keeper of the 
-eminds around it. _ And if,to defraud of a just’ inheritaneée ‘be 
a treason against integrity, which merits abhorrence; let him, 
who can endow a mind dependant on him, with a. treasure of. 
knowledge to make it useful, beloved, and honored, and who 
leaves that treasure uncared {or—let,him anticipate execra- 
tions, terrible as the tempest of Sodom. And if to administer 
poison be the dark deed*of an assassin; let, him" tremble, who 
_ventures'that deadliest and most diabolical felony, the poison- 
ing not.of a body but of.a soul. Never was the term murderer 
ahplict with such’ pertinence _ and intensity, as to him who 
blighted Eden with the frost 6f death. There is no hufan be- 
ing sovlike him, as he, who cheats, corrupts, unsettles, and ruins 
the immortal ‘mind; and the well-earned fate of such a con- 
summate wretch must it one doy be, to find himself 


As far beneath the infernal , ens hurled, 


As. from that centre’ to the ethereal waged 


We Rega seen how the possessor of intellect ome tiaee 
refuses allegiance to his Sovereign. He sometimes permits 


. 25 


f. 


pe intellect to betray him, not gre into disobedience, but 

a most unnatural pride.* 

‘J say unnatural, for it seems most strange, that illumination 
of intellect should lead it astray from the great Source of all 
light; and yet we know, in the significant phrase of the poet, 
that there is a light “which leads to bewilder and dazzles to 
blind.” Science learns a little of what may be known, learns 
a little more than turba sine nomine which surround her, and 
forthwith she thinks the whole horizon of knowledge i in view, 
and that she need know no more. Alas!’.how incongruous 
and dishonoring the persuasion, that,the science of this world 
should make its votaries think the science of another, visionary 
or fruitless. This life’is but the childhood of existence: 
death, as one has beautifully expressed it, is but the dying of 
all that is mortal, that nothing but life may remain. O surely 
we cannot know enough for ourselves, if we would know that 
only which will last us ior but three score and ten brief years; 
and He who made us, was for once untrue to his wisdom, if 
He formed us-so, that all we know of his works should keep us 
aloof from himself; and make us forget the dignity of*our ori- 
gin, and the glory to which such an origin may bid us aspire.t 
Yes, it isa solecism to imagine science and religion incompati- 
ble: in its true sense, one is but the elder sister of the other. 
It is a grievous solecism; by the great names of Copernicus 


_and Erasmus, of Pascal Rid ‘Euler, of Bacon and Hale, of Kep- 


ler ‘and ‘Newton, of, Aguessau,{ Haller and Locke+laymen 
every one of them—lI pronotince it so, O ye sons of light, 
and wisdom and glory, how, when ye bring your highest honors 
to the footstool.of Him who made you, and made.you what 


* See Note K. 


A philosopher once expressively compared the knowledge of the human 
and of the divine mind, with the light in a drop of dew, and with that which fills 


the solar system. And yet science, when selfish, mould confine us to the light 


of the dew-drop! 
* 


jt The celebrated chancellor of Francé, who “never passed a day from his 
childhood without reading some part of the Holy Scriptures; and he was of- 
ten heard to say, that it was the balmof his life.°—New Biog. Dict. i. 151. 
4 


26 


. 


you are, how does your homage put to shame that cold 1 imper- 
turbable pride, which forbids a gener ous acknowledgment of 
indebtedness to the Fountain of all knowledge, truth, virtue 
and joy. Flattery may tender such pride purple and fine - 
linen: sincerity must ordain it sackcloth and ashes.” 

Be it not then our melancholy mistake. to SUPPOse, that 
because our native powers and education may give us, so to 
speak, a wider range in the universe, and allow us to* walk 
abroad whither others cannot follow, over the boundless realms 
of the ever and‘every where‘reigning King, that therefore we 
are privileged to wander away from Him with freer license. 
This were a monstrous perversion of ‘liberty, given as a boon 
to make us happy and useful, and kindly .promotive of the hap- 
piness and usefulness of Mae Science should be but a 
new tie, to. bind us to the great centre of creation, the throne 
of universal intelligence and love; and all that we may know 
of this world, should only make us willing, and anxious and 
gratified, to know all that we may of another, whose dawn 
will ere long break. There is nothing but a presaging con- 
science, nothing but the forebodings of unforgiven transgres- 
sion, to make the dim future: dreadful; theré is every thing 
else to make it full of sweet hope and assuasive promise. 
“The sting of death is sin,” says Sir Henrys Halford, a late 
medical philosopher, who has probed’ the secrets’ of dissolu- 
tion with steady fortitude: thus bringing the asseveration, of | 
scripture to the strong test of fact, and sealing#its ‘solemn cer- 
tainty. But religion is, philosophically speaking, the best of 
all schemes to take this sting away; and to this, science, as the 
example of its purest and eR votaries shows, is any 
thing but an alien and’a foe. Nay, religion is itself a science, 
offermg wider scope, busier occupation, ahd intenser pleasure, 
than any other system which bears this-reverend name. They 
profane reason who suppose religion is*not a science; for 
says a deep philosopher, speaking .of its completeness, ' or- 
der, and beauty, “Theology is like a heaven, which wants 


* Omne animi vitium tanto conspectius in se 
Crimen habet, quanto major, qui peccat habetur. —Juvenal. 


aL 


Mf 
not more stars than 4 appear in it,, but we want eyes quick- 
sighted and piercing enough to reach them.” And as the 
same sagacious and profound thinker elsewhere maintains, 
it is a most unhonored science, for says he, speaking of its 
text- book, “As poets and astronomers have fancied among 
the celestial lights that adorn the firmament, bears, bulls, goats, 
dogs, scorpions and other beasts; so our adversaries. impute, | 
know not what imaginary deformities to a book, ennobled by 
its Autho? with many celestial lights, fit to instruct the world, 
and discover to them the ways of truth and blessedness.’”* 

Yes: religion is a science, and the only one whose foresight 
man will finally. eulogize; for it is the only one which 
thinks of him, as calculated for a-loftier destiny than the 
brutes that perish. It is ‘the only one which’ provides aliment 
for the mind, when our interest in the, whirl of passing trans- 
actions shall expire, when the usefulness of all we know of 
this world’ shall be no help, amid the new and overaweing 
grandeurs of eternity. Jt is the only one which ‘kindly takes 
us by the hand, and-showing us how the treasures of human 
wisdom must, like our gold and silver, be left behind, points us 
to the depths of unexplored futurity, and whispers the lament 
of the dying Grotius, “Heu! vitam perdidi, nil operose agen- 
do,” or the holy caution of S st. Jerome, “ Discamus in terris, 
quorum nobis scientia perseveret in celo.”t 

Such ascience deserves to live; and it will live, when many 
a one, which the wise in their own conceit think its rivals, 
shall have been drownéd and lost in the sullen flood of oblivion. 
There is in it, as the Pope. said of Hooker’s immortal work on 
~ church polity, “seeds of eternity,” and it will germinate, ex- 


* See’ Boyle’s Works, 4to. ii. 207.—Such is the tribute which philosophy, 
when she does not ree herself, can pay to revelation. It was once my 
privilege to hear a most gistinguish éd jurist endeavor to show, that, do other 
sciences as they might, Law had always recognized and honored Christianity. 
He said, among several things, that, by immemorial usage, the holy days of 
Christians were dies non juridici, ‘* The Christian Religion,” says an eminent 
Jaw'professor, “is part of our Common Law.” 


+ See Note BE. 


28 


pand and bloom, amid higher and brighter scenes. The sub- 

lime language of the soliloquist foretels its destiny: 
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself 
Grow dim with ‘age, and nature sink in years; 
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, 


Unhurt amid the war of elements, 
The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds. 


Fellow-citizens and friends! I trust my observations, ramb- 
ling as they of necessity are, in a discourse whose subjects 
must be almost as numerous as its pages, have still not been 
entirely without virtue, in showing you what education may 
be and ought to be. An institution which can promote this 
great cause is established in your midst, and waits but your 
sympathizing interest and generous ‘patronage to promote it 
vigorously and well. Shall it live, or shall it die? Its breath, 
if I may so say, is in your hands. Upon you.rests the respon- 
sibility of its fate. Its officers can never think hopefully of urg- 
ing it into reputation, while you sit silent and indifferent by. It 
is most unreasonable for any to suppose they may. © The insti- 
tution belongs not to them but to yourselves. To you will ac- 
crue the benefit of its success, and to you, if no sustenance be 
given it, will adhere the shame of its fall. Give it then your 
countenance—give it more; give it your earnest anxieties—give 
it more, give it your superfluities. Let some drops of that gold- 
en shower, which is descending in such abundance on this gar- 
den of the land, divert to Transylvania. * I might say to many 
among you, as a very matter of fact pleader for charity once 
did, you can give half your incomes to the cause of religion 
and learning, and have more than enough left to spoil’ every 
one of your children. “There is a sore:evil which I have 
seenunder the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof 
to their hurt.” 

Supply us then generously with the facilities for education: 
send us such minds to educate; as I know this favored region 
‘supplies, and we will prove ourselves worthy your confidence, 
or give place to those who can. 


a! 
: ’ i — 


-@ NOTES. 
™“ ; 


-~: NOTE A.—THE DARK AGES. 


THE sfbtndeets which have long had free course, renpesting the ages thus 
wilfully surnamed, have at last fuund a, check, in the erudite and powerful 
papers of a late writer in the’ British Magazine. This’ unscared author even 
ventures to call in question the statements of Robertson, in his introduction 
to the History 6f Charles V., and sustains himself by some very: unmanage- 
able facts. Robertson’s conclusions were evidently hasty, and drawn too 
from partial testimony. A few extracts from these papers were published in 
the Church Advovate, a religious journal issued in Lexington’ once a fortnight, 
but they were found too,unmusical for ‘‘ itching ears,” and were Accordingly 
dropped: ~ Bi i 

The following extracts, from two very’ differents authorities, will perstiade 
any candid mind, that both wrong and unfair conceptions have been formed 
of the condition of learning during the “dark ages.” Says Lord President 
Forbes, “ It must be owned that in almost every branch of learning, knowl- 
edge has been carried to a higher pitch, since the revival of learning, than it 
appears to have been by the ancients, from the remains of their works that 
have come to our hands. ‘But that is not to be ascribed to the superiority of 
genius of the moderns; since the true cause of it can be easily assigned, 7, e. 
that multitudes are at work on tHe same subject; and that the press affords so’. 
quick a conveyance of their conceptions and observations to each other, that 
they are thereby vastly aided in their lucubrations.” (Works of Rt. Hon. D. 
Forbes, p. 191.) And yet, notwithstanding. the discouragement, which, as 
this extractshows, attended the “ diffusion of useful knowledge,” Mr. Hallam 
is constrained to admit, ‘*We cannot pretend to.deny, that Roscelin, Anselm, 
Abelard, Peter Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and 
Ockham, were men of acute and even profound understandings, the giants of 
their own generation. Even with the slight knowledge we possess of their te- 
nets, there appears, through the cloud of repulsive technical barbarism, rays of 
metaphysical genius which this.age ought not to despise. Thus in the works-of 
Anselm, is found the celebrated argument of Des Cartes for the existence of a 
Deity, deduced from the idea of an infinitely perfect being.”—Hallam’s Middle 
Ages, iv. 387, 8. 

Mr. Hallam may ‘well say, ‘“ even with the slight knowledge we possess, ” 
for probably there is not one in ten thousand, who now knows much more of 


ug. 30 . 

Pel f . 
these fied of the “middie? not “dark” ages, than their names. Still they 
are summarily, collectively, totally, and hopelessly condemned!! One, how- 
ever, of the most learned theologians of our days, Hugh J. Rose, has studied a 
little of Thomas Aquinas: and whatisthe result? A brilliant eulogium un his 
genius. —See Mr. Rose’s able lecture’on ecclesiagtical history. 

To refer to a. fact or two, in concluding t te, it may be stated, that at 
Armagh in Ireland, there was once a splendid t Mversity, which went to wreck 
amid the surges ae whirlpools of politics, but which between the sixth and 
tenth centuries had six thousand students—from all. Europe-too, and was re- 
nowned far and wide as ** The School of the West”!! Where now is the 
university in the whale world with six thousand students? : 

Multitudes, no doubt, esteem Italy one of the most+ignorant and debased | 
among civilized nations; yet saysthe New York Evening Star, there are there, 
at this moment, no less than one hundred and seventy literary and scientific 
journals. One scientific journal (Silliman’s) Bas barely. worked ‘itself into © 
éxistence in this, as many think it, freest and most enlightened of the nations | 
of the earth! ‘ TF 

‘Finally, what araisttectibue ‘is, at the present day, at once the most popular 
and most difficult of execution? ‘That of those on whom we often bestow our 
Ingubrious pity,‘as among the roughest and most anhewn of men—the ancient | 


Goths! awe “ Phe & 
NOTE B. p, 8, SAXON ENGLISH. 


It isa pleas sant thing to perceive the growing reputation of this sort. of lan- 
guage, among scholars. The value of it, to say nothing of its beauty, was 
first taught me in the humble dabors ofa Sunday School. I never found any 
difftcilty in communicating knowledge to a child, if I could clothe my ideas 
in Saxon English. A hint of no mean significance this, to such as have to 
enlighten and guide uncultivated minds. ‘The following extract, from McIn- 
tosh’s History of England, manifests great familiarity with the nature and 
value of Saxon English, and ‘is worth the réflecting attention of allstudents. 

“From the Anglo-Saxons we derive the names of the most ancient officers 
among us, of the greater part of the divisions of the kingdom, and of almost 
allour towns and villages. From them also we derive our language, of which 
the structure and a majority of its words, mach greater than those who have 
not thought on the subject would at first easily believe, are Saxon. Of sixty- 
nine words which make up the Lord’s Prayer, there are only five not Saxon; 
the best example of the natural bent of our language, and of the words apt to 
be chosen by those who speak and write it without design. Of eighty-one 
words in the soliloquy of Hamlet, thirteen only are of Latin origin. .Evenin 
a passage of ninety words in Milton, whose diction is naore learned than that 
of any other poet, there are only sixteen Latin words. In four verses of the 
authorized version of Genesis, which contain a hundred and thirty words, there 
are no more thanfive Latin. In seventy-nine words of Addison, whose per- 
fect taste preserved him from a pedantic or constrained ‘preference, for any 
portion of the language, we find only fifteen Latin. In later times, the lan- 
guage has rebelled ainst the bad taste of those otherwise vigorous writers, 


fe oo * ¢ re 


who, instead of ennobling their style like, Milton by the Mbsition and combi- 
nation of words, have tried to raise it by unusual and farfetched expressions, 
Dr. Johnson himself, from whose corruptions English style is only recovering, 
in eighty-seven words of his fine parallel between Dryden and Pope, has found 
means to introduce no more than twenty-one of Latin depivation. The Jan- 
guage of familiar intercourse, Mill tors of jest and pleasantry, and.those of 
necessary business, the idioms or peculiar phrases into which words naturally 
run, the proverbs, which are the condeased and pointed sense of the people, 
the particles on which our syntax depends, and which are of perpetual recur- 
rencé;—all these foundations of a language, are more decisive proofs of the 
Saxon origin of ours, than even the great majorityeof Saxon words in writing, 
and the still greater niajority in speaking. In all cases, where we have pre- 
served a family of words, the superior significancy df a Saxon over a Latin 
term is most remarkable. ‘ Well-being arises from'well-doing,’ is a Saxon 
phrase, which may be thus'rendered into the Latin part of the language, ‘Fe- 
licity attends virfue;’ but how inferior in force is the latter! In the Saxon 
phraége, the parts or roots of words being significant in our language, and famil- 
iar to our eyes. and ears, throw their whole meaning into the compounds and 
derivations; while the Latin words of the same import, having their roots and 
elements in a foreign language, carry only a cold and conventional signification 
toanEnglishear. Itmust not be a subjectof wonder, that language should 
have many closer connexions with the thoughts and feelings which it denotes, 
than our philosophy can always explain.” 
The common version of the scriptures has been alluded to, as abounding in 
Saxon English,,.and one of the most erudite and accomplished scholars of the 
last century has pronounced it,’ “the best standard of out language.” (Bishop 
Lowth’s Introduction to the English Grammar, London, 1763, 2d Ed. p. 93.) 
Any person, familiar with more modern versions of the scriptures, must often 
~ have remarked’ their pure English character. ‘This may even be seen, by a‘com- 
parison between them and the Isaiah of Lowth himself. For example, Lowth 
says (Isaiah xiv. 17,) ‘‘ That never dismissed his captives to their own home”: 
our common version, ‘That opened not the house of bis prisoners.» Blayney’s 
Jeremiah, however, wouldsupply many more, and more striking instances for 
comparison. ‘That overflows with Latin English? 


NOTE C. p. 8 LEAVINGS OF SCIENCE. 


Bishop Watson, in his chemical essays, (vol. iv. p. 257,) tells the following 
anecdote: “Sir 1st Newton and Dr. Bentley met accidentally in London, 
and onSir Isaac’s inquiring what philosophical pursuits were carrying on at 

‘Cambridge, the doctor replied, ‘None, for when you go a hunting Sir Isaac, - 
you kill all the game; you have left ws nothing to pursue.’ » The doctor was 
hardly less true than complimentary; nor had he said the sume in our day of, 
not to, such as Newton, would his words have been less narenent, The num- 


* Not having McIntosh at hand, I refer to the Christian Oftrver for 1830, p. 442, 
for this extract. 


cd 32 


ber of those, who as Kepler sublimejy said; “ think God’s thoughts after him,” 
has dwindled almost toa cypher. If the fault be, as Professor Babbage seems 
querulously to affirm, in the indifference of the age to profound science, 
ought we to hear so many eulogies, as we do, on “ the spirit’? of an age, 
whose trophies are Penny magazines and: story-books on political economy ? 


NOTE D. p. 10. —CONSTANT EDUCATION. 


This subject has a pertinency in Kentucky, which it is hoped parents will 
goon feel more sensibly than they have done, It is too much the fashion aniong 
us, to have even a public education carried on at intervals. A student attends 
one college term, by no means certain that his parent will send him the next. 
He loses a term or two perhaps; and, with his time, loses most of his acquire- 
ments. When he returns, he is not only not where he was, when he left off, but 
has actually even fallen behind that point. So long as this loose practice pre- 
vails, a thorough education cannot be expected. » The mind does not improve 
like soil, from lying fallow. ‘The more it works, so that it be not overtasked, 
the better. If suffered to lie by, it will grow rusty like iron. Not a little 
time is often,requisite, to rub off the rust of some, whose course of education 
has been interrupted. When a parent means to give his child an education 
deserving the name, he should-not merely allow him, but constrain him to 
pursue his studiesin an unbroken series, till they are completed. And also, 
Jet no parent cherish the. doleful absurdity, that a year or two will answer for 
ason’s education. Why, it requirés an apprenticesbip of seven years to learn 
one how to make a shoe—shall it require less to fit one to become-a counsellor 
forjmen, upon the momentous concerns of their laws, their national policy, their 
estates, their lives, their salvation !! 


NOTE E. p. 11.—INCIDENTAL EDUCATION. 


The instance referred to may be familiarto many, but as Cecil’s works are 
less frequent west of our mountains, and as the extract is geen a volume of 
counsels, I venture its repetition. + 

‘¢ Children are very early capable of impression. I imprinted on my daughter 
the idea of ‘faith, at a very early age. She was playing one day with a few 
beads, which seemed to delight her wonderfully. Her whole soul was absorbed 
in her beads. I said,.“My dear, you have some pretty beads there.’ ‘Yes, papa!’ 
‘And you seem to be vastly pleased with them.? ‘Yes, Papa,!? ‘ Well 
now, throw ’em behind the fire.’ The tears started into her eyes. She look- 


‘ ed earnestly at me, as though she ought to have a reason for such a cruel sacri- 


fice. ‘Well, my dear, do as you please; but you know I never told you to 
do any thing, which I did not think would be good for you.’ She looked at 


‘ me a few moments Jonger, and then summoning up all her fortitude—her breast 


heaving with the effort—she dashed them into the fire. ‘¢ Well,’ said I, 
‘there let them lie: you shall hear more about them anBther time; but say no 
more about them now.’ Some days after, I bought her a box of larger beads, 
and toys of the same kind. When I returned home, I opened the treasure » 
and set it before her: she burst into tears with ecie ‘Those, my child,’ 


33 


said I, ‘are yours, because you believed me, when I told you it would 
be better for you to throw. those two or three paltry beads behind the 
fire. Now, that has brought you thistreasure. But now, my dear, remember, 

- as long as you live, what fatth.is. I did all this to teach you the meaning of 
faith. You threw your beads away when I bid you, because you had faith in 
me that I never advised you but for your good. Put the same confidence in 
God. Believe every thing that he says in his word. Whether you understand 
it or not, have faith in him that he means your good.’ ”” 

In connexion with this subject, I cannot but observe the importance, of 
watching and regulating the associations of.an opening mind. Some one has 
said, that he could perfectly command the destiny of a human being, by having 
sway over his associations. There is formidable truth in the remark. We should 
be specially careful, to bind up moral and religious ideas with agreeable and 
joyfulemotions. ‘If, says Dugald: Stuart, “the first conceptions which an 
infant formed of the Deity, and its first caval perceptions, were associated 
with the early impressions produced on the heart, by the beauties of nature, 
or the charms of poetical description, those serious thoughts, which are re- 
sorted to by most men, merely as,a source of consolation in adversity, and 
which on that account are.frequently tinctured with some degree of gloom, 
would recur spontaneously to the. mind, ,in its best and happiest hours, and 
would insensibly blend themselves with all its pores and most refined abioyr 
ments.” 

I never pitied a child more, than one whom his mother used to punish, by 
compelling him to commit to memory a certain number of verses in the Bible. 
Dread of the fatal result led me, long ago, to make it a principle, that religi- 
ous ideas should be associated with pleasant sensations; and as one instance 
of exemplifying this principle, I may mention my practice, of ordinarily 
allowing a child to say his prayers, when only,he has behaved well. I say 
ordinarily, for I would not be inexorable, lest he think the Deity like his 
parent. » In this way, his prayers become associated with the smiles and ca- 
resses of his parents, and the approbation of his own cotscience. 


NOTE F. p.15.—VALUE OF HISTORY. 

While alluding to this.subject generally, I cannot refrain from mentioning, 
the importance of a knowledge of the history of our own country. This has 
long been neglected and sadly disesteemed, to the great detriment of Ameri- 
can literati in the eyes of foreigners. An octogenarian'’of New Englandy Pre- 
sident of the Historical Society of Rhode Island, once informed me, that when 
Americans first began to visit England, for the purposes of travel, &c. they 
were accosted with incessant questions, respecting the history of their own 
country, which, to the astonishment of the querists, ‘to say nothing of their 
own mortification, they were utterly unable to answer. Massachusetts en- 
deavored to remedy this defect in her educated sons, by fostering and encour- 
aging a society, for the preservation and republication of ancient and perish- 
ing historical documents. So much patronage has this effort found, that the 
series of publications, ‘by the Massachusetts Historical Society, amounts to 


nee) 


34 


twenty-four octavo volumes!! Shall not Kentucky emulate such an example? 
A generous state pride is no where more prevalent, than among us; and in 
no state have the people more of romantic, entertaining and patriotic history, 
in which to pride themselves, Shall the relics of this history not be preserved, 

with sedulous and filial devotion, from the mould and dust of time? Soon, many 
of them will be gone forever. Soon many, or most, or all of the surviving wit- 
nesses, of the cays of Boone, of Indian warfare, and of all the eventful vicissi- 
tudes of a frontier life, will have wandered away or died, and much of Jocal his- 
tory be lost beyond recal. Is there now any one who can pourtray our fair Lex- 
ington, as the hunters saw her, when they associated her history with one of the 
never to be forgotten struggles of our revolution? If 80, where is the Ken- 
tuckian who’would not thank him for the picture? . 

In brief, to quote the preamble of the constitution of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, and which may be found in Vol. i. of its *¢ Collections,” 
** The preservation of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, and records, contain. 
ing historical facts, biographical anecdotes, temporary projects, and beneficial 
speculations, conduces to mark the genius, delineate the manners, and trace 
the progress of society in the United States, and must always have a useful 
tendency, to rescue the history of this country from the -ravages of time, and 
the effects of ignorance and neglect.» Such a work’ is eminently worthy 
the attention of any of our commonwealths, and is one about which Kentucky 
should be up and doing. * 


NOTE G. p. 15.—CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 


The affirmation is given interrogatively to make it stronger; still, it must not 
be understood as implying, that the study of our constitution is now entirely 
unattended to, in every section of our country: Some small books respecting 
it for schools, have been published, and are, it is believed, receiving some 
patronage. Mr. Justice Story, of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
has published an elaborate treatise on the Constitution, in three large octavos. 
His work has met with such high praise, as to induce the author to put out. an 
abridgement in one volume. This book ought to be introduced into all our 
colleges, that our graduated youth, all of whom, to say nothing of others, 
have a fair prospect of being in some way connected with legislation, may 
know something about the charter, which binds our immense republic together. 
Our mighty mass will soon, if it does not already, begin to groan under its own 
weight, and the most interesting of all political questions will be, “What does 
the,present exigency demand?” How can he be fit to debate it, who does not 
know the nature of our great compact, its origin and its history? Alterations 
in the constitution of his country, are matters of the gravest import to 
every American. Such alterations are more likely to be called for than 
ever. 


NOTE H. p/21.—ANCIENT LANGUAGES. 


I have spoken of the effect of:a proper study of them, in promoting a knowl. 
edge and command of our vernacular tongue. Doubtless in these days, when. 


35 


anti’s of all sortsare so fashionable,* there will be some anti-ancients who can 
quote freely against me, but I may be allowed to siate a fact or two, occurring 
within my own experience. f 

When in college, I one day heard the professor of rhetoric speaking of a lad 
_whose compositions so much surpassed his years, for ease, correctness, and 
felicity of expression, while his ideas were not at all beyond his age, that his 
instructer was amazed, and enquired into the history of hiseducation. There 
. wasno secret init that the lad knew of, but that he had been required to write 
frequent translations of the classics, and to aim in them, at as much variety 
and beauty of language as possible. The result justified the hope of his tutor 
most completely. | Long before his ideas were any thing but common place or 
puerile, he outstripped in his language, those who were nearly twice-as‘old! 

The hint struck me forcibly, and I determined to test the experiment with a 
budding mind, whose education I could control. Among other things, I 
had the whole of Sallust carefully turned into written and idiomatic English. 
The result was, if any thing, more encouraging than in the case which I had 
heard detailed, and which prompted the trial. 


NOTE I. p. 21.—NATURAL INEQUALITY. 


This sentiment may be thought incompatible with modern opinions and 
feelings, which have so strong a tendency to what old writers called, 
‘‘Jevelisme.”? Ishall let it go, with the following comment of the celebrated 
Necker, upon this ism, in his day. 

‘While they thus attempted to apply to exterior forms their doctrines of 
equality, they have in reality erected the greatest and most disgustful of all 
supremacies. They thought to level every thing, and they have subjected, 
with arod of iron, the mild to the audacious, the discreet to the violent, the 
humane to the ferocious. Jn a word, while they have suppressed all 
ideas of decency, while they ‘have filled up all the trenches that divided man- | 
kind, and endeavored to introduce an intellectual parity, in. order to amalga- 
mate the manners, of men the most distinct from each other, the consequence, 
I fear, of this unnatural familiarity will be nothing more than an additional 
facility, for indulging the passions of malignity and hatred. Nature tells us, 
through all her departments, that there can exist no harmony without shades 
and gradations. Society has no doubt deviated too far from this model, and 
rendered the disparity of rank, calamitous and shocking; to avoid this ex- 
treme, we are running into another still worse, we are converting the moral 
world into a vast plain, where every man will cross and elbow his neighbour, and 
all the advantagé will be to the most rustic and robust.”"—Necker on Power, ii. 
194, 195: London, 1792: 


NOTE K. p. 25.—-UNNATURAL PRIDE. 


1 call that pride unnatural, which inclines men to disesteem the Author of 
Nature, from what little they know of his works; and in truth, contemplated 
theoretically, nothing seems more so. But asa fact, most unhappily, such pride 


® Parere jam non scelus est.—Martial. 


36 


igany thing but unnatural, if that which is common is in accordance with na- 
ture. “A little learning,” said the poet, ‘is a dangerous thing,’’ and 
I fully believe his assertion to be as true of the self-complacent philo- 
sopher, as of the puffed up sciolist. For even the greatest philosopher 
well knows, that all he has attained, is, in comparison with what may 
be attained, but as ‘* the small dust in the balance;” and he feels there- 
fore, and most justly, very modest and very humble. [| entertain not 
the slightest doubt of the fact, that the loftiest archangel is a much 
more lowly being, than many a self-esteeming standard-bearer of some 
puny branch of human science. Jl heaven has not the self-conse- 
quence of one literary braggadocio. Of not one of its exalted inhabi- 
tants, basking in the sunshine of immortal glory, could that be said, 
which the terse and emphatic Ogden has said of too many of his fellow 
creatures: ‘*'The world and its adorable Author, Ais attributes and 
essence, his power, and rights, and duty, (1 tremble to pronounce the 
word,) be all brought together to be judged—seErore vs!” 

It seems strange, that the pride of philosophy should be more fash- 
ionable among us, who think ourselves wise above all before us, than 
even among the philosophers (some of them at least) of classical antiqui- 
ty. Dionysius Halicarnassus, in his second book of Antiquities, speaks 
with a sneer of those who despised such divinities as the pagan ones, 
through philosophy: through philosophy, he says, with a monosyllable of 
Spartan pregnancy of meaning, 7f that can be called philosophy, which 
will lead any todoso. Phaedrus too, in one of his fables, (Lib. iv. 6.) 
seems to have a sound estimation of the motives, and a wholesome 
contempt for the conduct of those, who, ambitious of their own glory, 
affected to despise a Power above them. ° ’ 

Et ut putentur sapere, coclum vituperant. 


No doubt he would have commended to all such, the fable of 
the frog who wanted to rival the ox; and if merriment could be 
allowable in those high orders of existences, who are dignified with the 
truly noble title, of ministers of the Almighty’s pleasure, they would in- 
dulge in a most amusing pity of the' swollen and strutting emmets, of 
this ant-hill of creation. Yes: the thought cannot be suppressed, al- 
though the subject isa grave one, that a proud philosopher must be even 
a ridiculous object, in the view of those blessed with superhuman wisdom; 
and in the view of such too, among the weakest of minds must that be, 
which cannot spell out something of the grand and close connexion be- 
tween all sciences, and especially between all sciences and that which 
teaches directly who, and what He is, who made us, and is the radiating 
centre of every beam of intellectual Jight throughout the Universe. 

It was said above, that a little learning was the source of philosophic 
pride. The opinion of Bacon, that it took less learning to make an 


es 


“ 37 


atheist than a Christian, is well known, and ¢ 
how a mind, like Newton's, can perceive the 
natural and religious science; and see it perceive this, with steady, 
dignified, and delighted calmness: most unlike some, who seem 
to take alarm at the sound of the very word, religion, with about as 
much good sense and grace, as a school-boy at sundry ominous appel- 
lations of ghosts and. goblins. Possibly, like school-boys, they are 
scared at their own fancies: but to hear Newton: ‘If natural philoso- 
phy in all its parts, by pursuing this method of analysis and induction, 
shall at length be perfected, the bounds of moral philosophy will be 
also enlarged. For, so faras we can know by natural philosophy, what 
is the First Cause, what power He has over us, and what benefits we re- 
ceive from him; so far our duty towards him, as well as towards one 
another, will appear to us by the light of nature.’’* 


. quoted. See 
harmony between 


NOTE L. p. 27. 


How noble is the sentiment with which Malebranche closés his cel- 
ebrated work,on aSearch after Truth. 

«“Fitenim cum probis, aliquot annos in quarundam rerum ignorantia 
versari, et uno temporis momento lumen in xternum duraturum conse- 
qui, quam naturalibus mediis ingenti cum applicatione et labore scien- 
tiam imperfectam, quzque nos in @ternis relinquat tenebris, adipisci, 
longe satius est.’ * 

It is far better to suffer with the good, under an ignorance of many 
things, and at length in a moment of time to be blessed with light which 
will never fade away; than itis, with much pains-taking and toil, to 
become proficients in sciences which may soon leave us, surrounded by 
the necessities of another state of being, in everlasting darkness. 


World-wisdom much has done, and more may do, 

In arts and sciences, in war and peace; ; 

But art and science, like thy wealth, will leave thee, 

And make thee twice a beggar at thy death.””— Young, Night 8th. 


* See Sedgewick’s Discourse before the University of Cambridge, Eng. p. 107. 


38 


I wished, on page 25, to add the name of Linnagvus, but could not, at 
the moment, find such testimony of his regard to religion as was wanted. 
The following quotation respecting him, has just met my eye; though 
it is to be regretted that, after nesyepaper fashion, the authority is not 
given. 

‘“The deeper he penetrated into the secrets of nature, the more he 
admired the wisdom of the Creator. He praised his wisdom in his 
works, recommended it by his speeches, and honored it by his actions. 
Wherever he found an opportunity of expatiating on the greatness, 
the providence andjomnipotence of God, which frequently happened in 
his lectures and botanical excursions, his heart glowed with celestial 
fire, and his mouth poured forth torrents of admirable eloquence.”— 


Epis. Recorder, Nov. 28, 1835. 


To the case of the University of Armagh, mentioned in Note A., it 
may be added, that just before Wiclif’s time, about A. D. 1300, the 
University of Oxford had 30,000 students; and that it was thought 
asad thing to have this number, in consequence of ecclesiastical and 
political troubles, reduced to 6,000. So much for the dark ages! 

Seein Wiclif’s New Testament, Memoirs of Wiclif, p. xi. 


To fill the page, I add two verses of Cunningham, which not inaptly 
illustrate a sentiment advanced in the address, viz: that there is a light 
which sometimes dazzles by its brightness—that we may be too prying. 


I’m lifted to the blue expanse; 
It glows serenely gay: 

Come Science! by my side advance, 
We'll search the milky way. 


Let us descend—The daring flight 
Fatigues my feeble mind; 

And science, in the maze of light, 
Isimpotent and blind. 


: > el ie , volt Thi shales mie i 1 Bel git ie i 


